It goes without saying, that if you have a very favorite scrapbooking magazine, there is nobody that should influence your decision to purchase it. Especially if it keeps your mo-jo flowing and the churning out of scrapbooking layouts. So why did I title this post this way?
Scrapbooking magazines have taken a major nose dive in the past several years. I was recently cleaning out my bookshelf where I have a collection of scrapbooking magazines that should put me to shame. I While they go back all the way to the mid 90’s, I was started to see that in 2002 one very popular scrapbooking magazine company had a July issue with over 250 pages. Guess how many pages the May 2008 magazine was? A very pathetic ___ pages. So what happened?
A scrapbooking inside believes that with the rising cost of the economy, the cost of magazine production is probably considerably higher than it was in 2002. In addition, marketing costs have gone up and this keeps scrapbooking companies from placing as many ads as they might have had. He also speculated that perhaps the magazines are not getting as many layout submissions as before.
While I will agree totally with the first point, I have to actually disagree with the second two. First of all, when I went through the two issues, I noticed that there are far more ads to pages in the current issue as to the 2002 copy. In fact, I counted twice as many ads in the 2008 issue as I did in the 2002 issue and its smaller. Odd? Yes.
Of course that could technically be the answer that he speculated with. Scrapbookers have backed away from submitting their layouts. Is this true? I don’t believe it is. There are complete websites, whole sections and areas and blogs that are all created to help people get published. Looking through them, when the calls are going out to individuals, I am seeing hundreds of scrapbookers anxiously await these calls and it actually seems a large majority of them have been published or are in the process. So what is the explanation of what is going on?
There really isn’t one. I recommend visiting your local library and flipping through their copy of an issue. If you like something, photo copy it or sketch it. If you have a friend or group of friends, perhaps you could share the expense of a subscription or each of you could get one and the issues could be shared all around.
Personally, until the magazines get better, I’ll save my money and purchase some idea books that are specifically geared to my interests more. You definitely get more for the value. Not to mention you are paying for your Internet or Wireless connection each month, utilize the many free galleries online and get inspiration for free.
What are your thoughts over the whole thing?
Nicole Humphrey writes articles for the Scrapbooking Blog and for the Frugal Blog. She also guest blogs on a variety of topics. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.
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